Anti-Iranian sentiment (Iranophobia) refers to any manifestation of hatred, prejudice, and discrimination against the Iranian people. It is most generally based upon a disdain for Iranian culture or the Persian language, and has been recorded across several countries and regions for centuries. The phenomenon may be motivated by a variety of factors, such as broader feelings of xenophobia or due to certain political developments involving Iran.
Historically, anti-Iranian sentiment (principally targeting Persians) has been a recurring theme in the Arab world since the Muslim conquest of Iran in the 7th century. Ethnic discontent between Arabs and Persians following the early Muslim conquests is thought to have peaked under the Umayyad dynasty and ultimately sparked the Iranian Intermezzo in the 9th century. This dynamic intensified with the Safavid conversion of Iran to Shia Islam by the 18th century and continues to influence Iran's relationship with the Arab League in the modern era.
A more recent surge in anti-Iranian sentiment began in the Western world, particularly in the United States, after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. In the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis, the United States and other Western countries have repeatedly clashed with Iran in both diplomatic and military channels over several complex points of contention, including Iran's nuclear program and military activities in the Strait of Hormuz and throughout the Middle East, where it has been engaged in proxy conflicts with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey.
The opposite phenomenon is known as Iranophilia, which involves a deep admiration for the Iranian people and their history, culture, language(s), or country. This sentiment is notable for having been and continuing to be widespread in many parts of the Muslim world, especially in the Indian subcontinent, where a uniquely Indo-Persian culture developed under the Mughal Empire and other powerful Persianate societies.
Contents
In the Arab world
Early Muslim conquests
The word "ʻajam" is derived from the root ʻ-J-M and refers to "unclear, vague and/or incomprehensible" as opposed to "ʻarabi", which means "clear, understandable; with perfect Arabic tongue". ʻAjam came to mean "one who mumbles" or "has difficulty speaking", similar to the Slavic ethnonym and their usage of "mutes" to refer to Germans. It came to be "applied especially to Persians", and the distinction of the two terms is found already in pre- and early Islamic literature (ʻAjam Temtemī). "In general, ajam was a pejorative term, used by Arabs because of their contrived social and political superiority in early Islam.", as summarized by Clifford Bosworth. Although Arabic dictionaries state that the word ʻajami is used for all non-Arabs, the designation was primarily used for Persians.
Many Sunni fundamentalist Arabs use slurs against Persians by calling them "fire worshippers" and "majus". Majus or majusi (مجوس) is an Arabic term for the Magi in Zoroastrianism.
Patrick Clawson states, "The Iranians chafed under Umayyad rule. The Umayyads rose from traditional Arab aristocracy. They tended to marry other Arabs, creating an ethnic stratification that discriminated against Iranians. Even as Arabs adopted traditional Iranian bureaucracy, Arab tribalism disadvantaged Iranians."
Many Arab Muslims believed that Iranian converts should not clothe themselves as Arabs, and many other forms discrimination that existed. Mu'awiya I, is said to have sent a letter addressed to Ziyad ibn Abih, the then governor of Iraq, wrote:
And keep an eye on the Mawali (non Arab) and those Ajam who have accepted Islam and choose the style of Umar Ibn Khattab in dealing with them because in that is humiliation and degradation for them. And let Arab marry their women but their women should not marry Arab. Let Arab be their inheritors but they should not be inheritors of Arab. Reduce their subsistence and benefits and make them go in front in wars and let them maintain the roads, cut the trees and do not let them be the Imam of Arab in congregational prayers and do not let anyone of them be in the front row of prayer when Arab are present, unless the row is not completed by Arab. Do not appoint anyone of them as a Governor on the border of Muslims and do not appoint anyone as a Governor in any city. No one from them should be a Governor for making rules and decisions for Muslims because this was the style and habit of Umar. May Allah, from the Ummah of Muhammad (S.A.W), and particularly from Bani-Umayyah reward him, reward him greatly..Mistreatment of Iranians and other non-Arabs during the early period of Islam is well documented. Under the Umayyads, many mawlas (non-Arab Muslims) employed by a patron enjoyed favourable positions as equal to Arab Muslims, but they were generally victims of cultural bias and even sometimes considered to be on an equal footing of a slave. According to sources of that time, the mistreatment of mawlas was a general rule. They were denied any positions in the government under Umayyad rule.
Modern era
It was in Baghdad where the first Arab nationalists, mainly of Palestinian and Syrian descent, formed the basis of their overall philosophies. Prominent among them were individuals such as Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (the Mufti of Jerusalem) and Syrian nationalists such as Shukri al-Quwatli and Jamil Mardam. Sati' al-Husri, who served as advisor to the Ministry of Education and later as Director General of Education and Dean of the College of Law, was particularly instrumental in shaping the Iraqi educational system. Other prominent Pan-Arabists were Michel Aflaq and Khairallah Talfah, as well as Sati' al-Husri, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Zaki al-Arsuzi and Sami Shwkat (brother of Naji Shawkat). These individuals formed the nucleus and genesis of true pan-Arabism.
Saddam Hussein forced out tens of thousands of people of Persian origin from Iraq in the 1970s, after having been accused of being spies for Iran and Israel. Today, many of them live in Iran.
Early on in his career, Saddam Hussein and pan-Arab ideologues targeted the Arabs of southwest Iran in an endeavour to have them separate and join 'the Arab nation.' Hussein made no effort to conceal Arab nationalism in his war against Iran (which he called "the second Battle of al-Qādisiyyah).
"Yellow revolution", "yellow wind", "yellow storm" were thrown as slurs by Saddam Hussein against Iran due to Hulagu's 1258 sack of Baghdad during the Mongol wars and the terms "Persian" and "Elamites" were also used by Saddam as insults.
On 2 April 1980, a half-year before the outbreak of the war, Saddam Hussein visited Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. By drawing parallels to the 7th-Century defeat of Persia in the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah, he announced:
"In your name, brothers, and on behalf of the Iraqis and Arabs everywhere, we tell those [Persian] cowards who try to avenge Al-Qadisiyah that the spirit of Al-Qadisiyah as well as the blood and honor of the people of Al-Qadisiyah who carried the message on their spearheads are greater than their attempts."
Saddam also accused Iranians of "murdering the second (Umar), third (Uthman) and fourth (Ali) Caliphs of Islam", invading the three islands of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs in the Persian Gulf and attempting to destroy the Arabic language and civilization.
In the Western world
United States
Anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States has been shaped by mid-20th-century housing covenants, geopolitical conflicts, and media portrayals. Hostility against Iranians and Iranian Americans sharply escalated following the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, resulting in systemic discrimination in social life, employment, and airport security. Additionally, Hollywood and American television series have faced long-standing criticism for perpetuating negative stereotypes and demonizing Iranian culture. In the 2020s, heightened diplomatic tensions between Washington and Tehran led to renewed concerns regarding ethnic profiling, increased border scrutiny, and federal entry restrictions.
Netherlands
In 2015, requests of the Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands to monitor Iranian students prevented them from studying at the University of Twente in the city of Enschede and Eindhoven University of Technology in the city of Eindhoven. The latter university had even asked the AIVD, the Dutch intelligence service, to monitor Iranian students. AIVD stated that it was not its duty to do so, and the university decided to stop admitting any applicants from Iran, regardless of the degree sought. The Dutch government said that it fears the theft of sensitive nuclear technology that could assist the Iranian government in constructing nuclear weapons. After protests were lodged, the Dutch government announced again that Iranian students and Dutch citizens of Iranian heritage were not allowed to study at many Dutch universities or go to some areas in the Netherlands.
Additionally, in 2008 several other universities stated that the government had prohibited them from admitting students from Iran, and technical colleges were not allowed to give Iranian students access to knowledge of nuclear technology. It was noted that it was the first time after the German occupation during the Second World War that ethnic-, religion- or racial-based restrictions were imposed in the Netherlands. Harry van Bommel, a parliamentarian of the Dutch Socialist Party (SP), condemned the berufsverbot, deliberately using a German word associated with the Second World War.
Although the Dutch authorities state that the UN security council's resolution 1737 (2006) authorises them and obliges all member states of the UN to take such a measure, it remains the only country to have done so.
On 3 February 2010, a court in The Hague ruled that the Dutch government's policy to ban Iranian-born students and scientists from certain master's degrees and from nuclear research facilities was overly broad and in violation of an international civil rights treaty.
Russia
In the 19th century, during the existence of the Russian Empire, Russians dealt with Iran as an inferior "Orient", and held its people in contempt whilst ridiculing all aspects of Iranian culture. The Russian version of contemporaneous Western attitudes of superiority differed however. As Russian national identity was divided between East and West and Russian culture held many Asian elements, Russians consequently felt equivocal and even inferior to Western Europeans. In order to stem the tide of this particular inferiority complex, they tried to overcompensate to Western European powers by overemphasizing their own Europeanness and Christian faith, and by expressing scornfully their low opinion of Iranians. The historian Elena Andreeva adds that this trend was not only very apparent in over 200 Russian travelogues written about Iran and published in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but also in diplomatic and other official documents.
In the Turkic world
Turkey
According to a 2013 survey, 75% of Turks look at Iran unfavorably against 14% with favorable views. Political scientist Shireen Hunter writes that there are two significant groups in Turkey that are hostile towards Iran: "the military establishment and the ultra-Kemalist elite" and the "ultranationalists with pan-Turkist aspirations" (such as the Grey Wolves). Canadian author Kaveh Farrokh also suggests that pan-Turkist groups (the Grey Wolves in particular) have encouraged anti-Iranian sentiments.
Historically, the Shia Muslims were discriminated in the Ottoman Empire as they were associated with their Iranian/Persian neighbors. In Turkey, relatively large communities of Turks, Kurds and Zazas are Alevi Shia, while some areas in Eastern Anatolia, notably Kars and Ağrı, are Twelver Shia.
Azerbaijan
Historic falsifications in the Republic of Azerbaijan, in relation to Iran and its history, are "backed by state and state backed non-governmental organizational bodies", ranging "from elementary school all the way to the highest level of universities".
As a result of the two Russo-Persian Wars of the 19th century, the border between what is present-day Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan was formed. Although there had not been a historical Azerbaijani state to speak of in history, the demarcation, set at the Aras river, left significant numbers of what were later coined "Azerbaijanis" to the north of the Aras river. During the existence of the Azerbaijan SSR of the Soviet Union, pan-Turkist political elites of Baku who were loyal to the Communist cause, in tandem with Soviet-era historical revisionism and myth-building, invented a national history based on the existence of an Azeri nation-state that dominated the areas to the north and south of the Aras river, which was supposedly torn apart by an Iranian-Russian conspiracy in the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828. This "imagined community" was cherished, promoted and institutionalized in formal history books of the educational system of the Azerbaijan SSR and the post-Soviet Azerbaijan Republic. As the Soviet Union was a closed society, and its people were unaware of the actual realities regarding Iran and its Azeri citizens, the elites in Soviet Azerbaijan kept cherishing and promoting the idea of a "united Azerbaijan" in their activities. This romantic thought led to the founding of nostalgic literary works, known as the "literature of longing"; examples amongst this genre are, for instance, Foggy Tabriz by Mammed Said Ordubadi, and The Coming Day by Mirza Ibrahimov. As a rule, works belonging to the "literature of longing" genre were characterized by depicting the life of Iranian Azeris as a misery due to suppression by the "Fars" (Persians), and by narrating fictional stories about Iranian Azeris waiting for the day when their "brothers" from the "north" would come and liberate them. Works that belonged to this genre, as the historian and political scientist Zaur Gasimov explains, "were examples of blatant Azerbaijani nationalism stigmatizing the "division" of the nation along the river Araxes, as well as denunciations of economic and cultural exploitation of Iranian Azerbaijanis, etc." Gasimov adds: "an important by-product of this literary genre was strongly articulated anti-Iranian rhetoric. Tolerance and even support of this anti-Iranian rhetoric by the communist authorities were obvious."
During the Soviet nation building campaign, any event, both past and present, that had ever occurred in what is the present-day Azerbaijan Republic and Iranian Azerbaijan were rebranded as phenomenons of "Azerbaijani culture". Any Iranian ruler or poet that had lived in the area was assigned to the newly rebranded identity of the Transcaucasian Turkophones, in other words "Azerbaijanis".